74

Get ready for meeting death 1000 times!

This game really knows how to kill you in so many ways, after half minute of playing it I really died. Now, i will show my impressions of the game:
CONTROL : It took me a bit to get used to. Clumsy turning, slow recovery from weapon swings, and more. I would recommend to anyone picking this up for the first time, run around for a few minutes, get used to how your character moves.
COMBAT : The combat is every bit as hard as you have heard. For a beginner like me , it was merciless. However, once you learn HOW to fight, it is one of the most rewarding experiences in recent gaming memory. Going back and totally dominating something that basically has humiliated me on prior attempts is nothing short of pure joy.
And it only gets better. As you adapt to the controls, and the enemies behaviours, you get bolder. You get aggressive. And, you get dead. he he. The game will always remind you if you get to cocky.
STORY : I will be honest, I focussed more on the gameplay than the story. The story is good, but feels a little tacked on. Lots to listen to and read though.
GRAPHICS/WORLD : I really didn't enjoy the graphics at first, but after a while i got used to it. Some places can take your breath out. Also, monsters(they're monsters after all) don't look so ugly.
So this is it, a beautiful world with ugly creatures in which you're gonna die every time you get curious.

77

Julius Caesar or Marcus Junius Brutus?

I came to Dark Souls 2 thinking "Oh god, I'll die again". Wasn't disappointed. 7 deaths in first 30 minutes told me that I'm terrible at this game. But first...is it worth the money? Damn right it was. It gave me a better Dark Souls experience than the first one. Port is a lot better than the first DS, but still - it lacks something. Another thing - graphics. All the nice features were removed before the release, so don't count on beautiful game. You'll get a slightly more polished Dark Souls 1. But we're not for the graphics here, are we? Gameplay is almost the same as Dark Souls 1 - dodge, dodge, block, parry, hit, repeat. Nothing new, except some small changes to controls and now weapons can be wielded in different styles when dual wielding them. In the end...I think it's worth getting. Want good Dark Souls experience? Go for it.

65

Average clone of Dark Souls 1

Poor port, average graphics and level design, generally lacking copy of Dark Souls 1. Not to mention quite high price for such a work. Nothing revolutionary except difficulty which is pretty high only because of number of enemies. Always attacking with 3-4, no chance to have a fair fight. Need lot of unnecessary patience and exterminate them one by one. In DS1 you had much stronger enemies, but at least you fought them alone, not with entire groups. Not to mention lack of any information where to go and what to do. Plus fact that even if you're hollow you can still be attacked by others, which is bothersome and impossible in most of cases, when your opponents are cheaters. Bosses are strange case. In one case you have easy ones, in other you have to fight cheap and pretty hard opponents, but all of them can be easily beaten with other players, which doesn't make any challenge at all (where is difficulty scaling?).
It's still a nice game, which you can play hours and hours, but it lost it's magic, which first one had. Only for DS1 hardcore fans.

80

Not as bad of a port as some would have you believe

The game's UI isn't the best designed for keyboard and mouse, this is true. It's certainly not as good as Mass Effect 1's UI for instance but it's certainly not bad enough to warrant giving this game a super low score.
If you play this game with a keyboard and mouse, the UI will be annoying at first but it'll be easy enough to adapt to. If you play with a gamepad, then you really wont know what we're talking about at all so it's a non-issue if you own a controller.
As far as performance goes, it runs very well on my mid-level system. No hiccups and runs at a constant 60fps.
As for the graphics - well, I'm not a huge fanboy of crysis level graphics so I'll say they're fine. They're not incredible but really, was dark souls ever designed to be the next crysis? It runs good, it's challenging and it's fun.
The game itself does start slow. I'd say it starts worse than the first game but it really does get better and better as it goes on. Only 20 minutes in and I was having more fun than I was more than 2 hours into the first game.
The environments are nicely designed and some of the enemies are rather well done too.
I do think some of the vendor placements and the way acquisition of souls works couple together to make this game a little too easy in places. I've been able to stay stocked up on essential items with absolutely no fear of ever having to run short or even have to use anything at all at times.
Now I'm not saying the game is too easy but at time it's easy to lame it out, so to say.

87

More Bosses To Kill, More Ways To Die

Fans of the original Dark Souls will love this game. It takes what was good about the original: the huge boss fights and gives you more of them to deal with.
Ok, it is not that different from the 1st one in terms of killing everything you see before they kill you and doing what you can to survive. But it is still a brilliant game with some more polish on it than the 1st one.
And whilst you might not have to deal with a boss within the 1st 10 minutes of the game like the 1st one. It gives you more of a small learning curve. Letting you get used to your chosen class before letting you fight the bosses which I think is good.
If you liked the 1st one, I would say pick this one up and enjoy it. If you are thinking about getting this, I would also say get this and enjoy it

10

A joke of a console port.

So first off, I played a total of 15 minutes and probably killed 4 enemies, this review has NOTHING to do with gameplay.
I just could not get myself to play this game, everything about this screams of port. First off, the menus, they almost made me quit the game within a minute of launching it, they are probably the worst I've encountered in a game to date, nothing more to it. The options are for some reason even worse, to get to half of them you need to load up a save or in the case that you don't have one, start a new game. The UI has the buttons of a 360 controller yet the game does not work with mine for some unknown reason (yes it works in Steam big picture mode and in other games).
The graphics are overall also quite "meh", lighting effects and some textures look good but a lot of animations are horrid and as I got to the character creation menu I was seriously doubting that I was playing a game released in 2014.
Overall this just feels like an unfinished product and I am legitimately sad that I spent my money on it.

5

The quality of this game is amazing...

ly bad. It it the second worst PC port I have ever played, second only to Dark Souls 1. The gameplay is irrelevant since there's a giant, thick gate of extremely horrible UI/menus/feel separating it from the player. There are much, much better games on this site to buy.

90

More of the same goodiness from the first Dark Souls.

If you loved the first Dark Souls and Demon's Souls you will love this game. This is in many ways better that DaS.
For example, the graphics are a lot better AND the game is better optimized. If you could run DaS, you can run DaS II, perhaps even with better settings (there are a lot more video settings this time around).
The animations also feels a lot more fluid, but more importantly, they are not as long as the were in the first game. It doesn't take 10 seconds to drink an estus flask.
Otherwise, it's not that different from the first game. Cool subtle story unfolding as you play, with lots of nice lore to pick up if you search hard enough; pretty good voice acting; beautiful enviroments; good, sparse soundtrack and a nice selection of weapons and armor to find.
A nice addition is that you can see how many times you have died with the character you're currently playing as.
My only 2 problems with the game is that the multiplayer still is a bit laggy, and the game overall doesn't seem quite as hard as the first, but it's not a huge difference.

89

Get Rekt'd over, and over...

And over again. Dark souls 2 stays in true form to its predecessor. A sequel worthy to the original Dark Souls. The PC form delayed a whole month to its console release is worth the wait with the modding community already hard at work to bring greater immersion, graphics mods and other hilarious additions (see Gaben Shield).
10/10 would die 10/10 times and would come back 10/10.